Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Throughout the legal history of the feudal dynasties on the mainland, the idea of "severely punishing and setting an example" has been generally followed in dealing with corruption among officials. Among them, the Ming Dynasty is the most typical, and the Ming Dynasty attached great importance to corruption from the beginning of the country.
The severity of the laws established and enforced was extremely deterrent, but the problem of corruption was most rampant in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty, especially in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, when the darkness of officialdom and the increasing corruption of officialdom eroded the foundation of the rule of the Ming Dynasty, and eventually led to its demise.
So what are the implications for the governance of corruption in the Ming Dynasty and for today's era?
1. The meaning of corruption
"Corruption" is the abbreviation of corruption, and its essence includes two contents: corruption and corruption, and the meaning of corruption and corruption has converged in today's society, and it can be simply summarized by corruption.
In fact, the word "corruption" first appeared in "Hanshu Food and Goods Chronicles (I)", "The millet of Taicang, Chen Chen Xiangyin, overflowing with dew and accumulating outside, corruption is inedible".
Later, through a series of evolutions and extensions, "corruption" gradually encompassed the meaning of "corruption of power or the transformation of power functions" in modern society.
There have been foreign scholars who have studied corruption from a historical perspective and given a certain legal rationality to interpret "corruption", believing that if a certain act violates the written code.
or there is an unwritten but logically necessary legal provision, and either the government or the people are harmed by this act, and the act is an act of corruption.
On the whole, from the perspective of legal regulation and the manifestations of corruption in daily life, "corruption" can be described as a kind of behavior in which a state public official or a person who holds or exercises public power of the state, in the process of exercising and holding his power, uses public power or the social influence of public power to violate the original purpose of the state or the collective to grant public power, violates the basic social order, and at the same time takes the opportunity to seek benefits (for individuals or collectives).
Of course, with the development of the times, the ways and means of corruption are also changing, and even in the activities of the private sector, corrupt behaviors can occur, so we should always recognize and understand the essence of corruption with a developmental mindset.
2. Corruption in the Ming Dynasty
Although the Ming Dynasty had a relatively severe and even cruel punishment system for corruption as a guarantee, and the Hongwu Emperor also dreamed of a lasting continuation of the peaceful and prosperous era, the bloody reality made great irony about this.
(1) Corruption that existed at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China
At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the phenomenon of corruption in the officialdom was more serious, and officials at all levels were colluded, greedy for pleasure, and flouted the law, among which the more typical was the case of embezzlement of autumn grain by Guo Huan, the head of the household department in the eighteenth year of Hongwu (1385).
The case involved as many as 10,000 central and local officials, and it was appalling; at the beginning of the case, it was only Yu Min and others who denounced Zhao Quande, an official of the Department of Political Envoys and the Department of Prosecution and Prosecution, who had conspired with Guo Huan, a servant of the household department, and others to commit corruption and commit fraud and steal official grain.
Zhu Yuanzhang seized the clues and ordered a strict investigation, and later the case successively involved a series of central officials such as Zhao Mao, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, Wang Huidi, the secretary of the Criminal Department, Wang Jie, the secretary of the Ministry of War, and Mai Zhide, the waiter of the Ministry of Industry.
In the end, it was found that the money and silver that had been embezzled and stolen were converted into grain amounting to 240,000 stones.
After the case was clarified, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Zhao Mao, Wang Huidi, and others to be abandoned on the streets, Guo Huan and other six servants and officials below the level of local political envoys were executed, and tens of thousands of officials involved were arrested and imprisoned.
Not only the central government, but also local officials took advantage of their geographical advantages to unscrupulously embezzle and bribe, and most of them would take advantage of the opportunity to collect money and grain to wantonly prey on the common people.
For example, officials in western Zhejiang, when they are levied, are like tigers and wolves who are greedy and extravagant, harming the people a lot, and harvesting autumn grain, according to the regulations, it should be two times per stone of rice, but local officials usually set up clever names and expropriate tyranny.
The water corner money, the car foot money, and the food money are all counted, plus the identification money, pu basket money, bamboo basket money, and the money of the gods and Buddhas along the river demanded by the officials in charge of the treasury, and the additional amount of money demanded amounted to 900 wen, which was nearly double the regular tax.
(2) Corruption in the middle and late Ming Dynasty
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, "the career of the official is like the market", but anyone who wants to enter the imperial court as an official, as if in the market to trade, the person seeking the official is beautiful and ugly, the family is rich and poor, and the speed of bribes are all important considerations.
In order to be able to maintain their position in the officialdom and seek greater opportunities for promotion, the subordinates often try their best to curry favor with their superiors, and in addition to flattery, it is common to entertain guests, so the style of eating and drinking in officialdom prevails.
As Xie Zhaozhe said, "The treasure of the poor mountains, the fault of exhausting the water, the oyster house in the south, the bear's paw in the north, the scorching fish in the East China Sea, the mare's milk in the Western Regions, the rich people of the past and the small four seas, only cost a feast, and the property of the middle family cannot be done." Since then, corruption has intensified.
According to historical records, at that time, "accepting bribes and accepting bribes, public conduct without taboo" and "no officials without bribes, no guards and no theft", especially during the Wanli period, was supposed to be the Chinese New Year's Eve festival with family gatherings.
The huge city of Nanjing, however, was crowded with roads by gift-givers, and it was forbidden to walk normally, which can show that the officialdom in the middle and late periods was like a bazaar, selling officials and lords, colluding with officials and businessmen, and was a mess of filth.
(3) Corruption of non-officially recognized local officials
In addition to the official officials appointed by the imperial court, there are also a number of local officials who are responsible for undertaking specific affairs to run rampant in the countryside and trample on the people.
For example, when dealing with economic affairs, officials often take advantage of all conveniences, such as making registers, collecting money and grain, and managing warehouses, to accept bribes, embezzle taxes and grain, and steal from prisons.
Another example is that household officials and cabinet officials will take advantage of the good opportunity of the decade to make a large number of yellow books, accept bribes from local tyrants through various means, deceive superiors and subordinates, and lie to people, so as to transfer the enslavement to poor households.
What's more, when dealing with judicial affairs, they bend the law for bribes, disregard human lives, and gain power in local areas.
In May of the eighth year of Tianshun (1464), Song Shou, a native of Quanjiao County, Zhili, embezzled and deceived the price of more than 240 taels of silver, and was sent to the county to be imprisoned by the imperial history.
(4) Corruption of eunuchs
The eunuch politics of the Ming Dynasty was prevalent, and the eunuchs who entered the political arena were extremely corrupt, in August of the fifth year of Zhengde (1510), Liu Jin was executed by Ling Chi, and when his family property was confiscated, he got 240,000 gold ingots and more than 50,000 taels, 5 million ingots and more than 100,000 taels, two buckets of precious stones, and countless other pearls, jade, gold and silver utensils.
In the thirty-first year of Wanli (1603), Bai Xixiu, the governor of Shanxi, revealed that the tax supervisor Sun Chao said: "Shanxi has released more than 45,200 taels of tax grain every year, and all of them have been paid, but the tax supervisor Sun Chao stopped entering 16,800 taels of silver, and the remaining silver was not hidden, pretending to be in arrears." "The magnitude of the embezzlement can be seen from this.
3. Governance measures for corruption in the Ming Dynasty
The punishment of corruption reached the peak of the Ming Dynasty. The specific measures are as follows:
(1) The formulation of the "Da Ming Law".
The enactment of the "Da Ming Law" can be said to be one of the important measures to punish corruption in the Ming Dynasty, which not only integrates rigorous content, meticulous provisions and convenient search methods, but also highlights the core concept of strict punishment for "corruption" crimes.
The "Da Ming Law" marks the six kinds of corruption crimes summarized in the law of the Ming Dynasty at the top of the law, in order to show that the punishment of corruption is heavy, and in terms of punishment, the "Da Ming Law" stipulates that officials receive money "120 times in violation of the law", and officials receive money "80 times in violation of the law".
At the same time, from the perspective of unity of power and responsibility, different official positions have different responsibilities corresponding to them, and in contrast, the higher the official position, the more severe the punishment.
At the same time, if the officials do not pervert the law, they will all be given 120 stolen goods, 100 rods, and 3,000 li, that is, the same punishment shall be imposed regardless of the size of the official position and the severity of the responsibility.
(2) The formulation of the "Great Message".
The Ming Dynasty "Great Message", whose real name is "The Imperial Great Message", is a special criminal law compiled by Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, and its characteristics are mainly as follows:
First, there is no distinction and no principle in conviction and sentencing. In the Ming Dynasty's "Dahao", "torture and killing" was regarded as an important way for the ruler to establish his authority, and when sentencing, more emphasis was placed on Zhu Yuanzhang's personal assumptions, regardless of severity, subordination, negligence and intentionality, and the offender was punished together, and heavy punishment was mostly used, which was widely linked.
Second, it highlights the idea of "re-enforcing the rule of officials", and it can be said that the idea of re-enforcing the rule of officials is vividly displayed in the Ming Dynasty's "Great Message".
It not only made more detailed provisions on officials forging imperial seal documents, dereliction of duty, cheating, and perverting the law for bribes, but also punished corruption more severely than the "Da Ming Law".
For example, the "Pichang Temple" was set up next to the local government office as a place to tear the skin of corrupt officials, and the punishment was so severe and sensational that it was not until the middle of the Ming Dynasty that the Ming government announced that the edict attached to the law would be abolished and not used, thus ending its historical mission.
(3) Strengthening the functions of supervision bodies
In the 15th year of Hongwu (1382), the original Imperial Historical Observatory was reorganized into the Metropolitan Procuratorate, which further expanded the scope of the exercise of power.
In the central government, the Imperial Procuratorate set up the left and right imperial history, the left and right deputy capital imperial history, and the left and right Jindu imperial history, which were in charge of the official program and were directly responsible to the emperor, and would not be interfered with by other departments.
At the local level, there are 13 departments of supervision in the Metropolitan Procuratorate, which are divided according to different regions and operations, and as the dispatched units of the central administrative supervision body, they are responsible for the supervision work within the area under their jurisdiction, so as to realize the management and supervision of the central government over the local government.
In the Ming Dynasty, by refining the rules of the imperial history in terms of inspection matters, patrol matters, and return inspections, a relatively complete system of patrolling the imperial history was formed.
(4) The setting of factory and health institutions
The Ming emperors believed that the law alone could not firmly maintain their state dominance, and that more direct means were needed to quickly eliminate those factors that threatened the imperial power.
In the fifteenth year of Hongwu (1382), Ming Taizu set up Jinyi Guard, Jinyi Wei was in charge of the court staff, guards, arrests, and prisons, and had the power to investigate, arrest and try cases, and in the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), Ming Chengzu set up the East Detective Factory, referred to as the East Factory.
Dongchang was a secret service in charge of detectives and prisons under the direct command of the emperor, whose fundamental task was to secretly monitor the common people and crack down on acts that might threaten the imperial power, so as to maintain centralized rule.
In the thirteenth year of Chenghua (1477), Ming Xianzong set up the West Factory, the power was tilted for a while, the scope of activities from the Beijing division spread all over the country, and the production of factory and health institutions was originally set up by the rulers of the Ming Dynasty from the perspective of supervision of corruption.
However, due to many factors, such as the nature of its spy and the expansion and involvement of its internal powers, it has not only not made much contribution to the anti-corruption work, but has instead exacerbated the rampant corruption and seriously disrupted the normal judicial system.
Fourth, analyze the reasons for the failure of the heavy code to control corruption
By comprehensively combing through the different views of scholars in the process of studying the causes of corruption among officials in the Ming Dynasty and previous dynasties, we will briefly state our views in combination with the case of the Ming Dynasty's "heavy code to control corruption".
(1) The inevitability of personal desires
To a certain extent, the term "unquenchable desire" shows people's understanding of the root cause of corruption, that is, greed in human nature is an important cause of corruption.
When dealing with this ugly problem of human nature, the Ming Dynasty blindly believed in the indoctrination of morality and the suppression of excessive superstitious power, believing that the mechanical combination of the two could solve the problems that plagued the world, which obviously could not achieve the desired results.
One of the important reasons is that the exercise of the "heavy code" itself in the Ming Dynasty was to rely on unrestrained power, and the object of the "heavy code" was precisely the abuse of power, which led to contradictions and conflicts.
(2) The poor people's tolerance for corruption
The passive and tolerant attitude of the poor people also contributed to the spread of corruption, and as the ruling class, ordinary people did not dare and could not question the right of officials and gentry to enjoy a high standard of living.
And to a certain extent, for ordinary people, maybe they can pass the imperial examination and the title of the gold list, and from then on they will be ranked in the court and achieve an ideal life.
If they choose to rise up and resist, not only is there little hope but also often invites death, so from the perspective of risk assessment, ordinary people are more willing to choose to withhold it.
At the same time, in feudal society, power is almost blank for ordinary people, and sometimes even the basic right to subsistence cannot be guaranteed, so it is naturally more difficult to mention the supervision of the operation of power.
(3) Lack of oversight mechanisms
As mentioned above, we do not have effective measures to prevent the "unquenchable desire" itself, and to a considerable extent, ancient China relied on moral and power factors to restrain the corrupt behavior of officials and related stakeholders.
For example, the precept stone is engraved with the words "Eryu Erlu, the people's fat and the people's anointing, the people are easy to abuse, and the heavens are difficult to deceive", but we should be clear about the problem, this kind of use of moral force and power control means cannot achieve the effect of effective prevention and treatment.
It should be said that in the Ming Dynasty it was not that there was no relevant supervision mechanism, on the contrary, the establishment of the supervision mechanism in the Ming Dynasty was the period when the feudal dynasty reached its peak, and there were such as factory guards, metropolitan inspection institutes, Dali Temple, etc. in the center. But we also need to be clear that these are not really anti-corruption agencies.
On the contrary, it has become one of the most serious places for corruption, and the supervisory body we call should be independent of the power system itself, and it should exist independently from top to bottom, and not have horizontal overlap with other institutions.
5. The enlightenment of the failure of the Ming Dynasty to deal with corruption
The measures taken by the Ming Dynasty to deal with corruption should be second to none in terms of both the way of cracking down on corruption and the intensity of punishment, and even many punishment methods make listeners frightened.
However, the strict laws only made the early Ming Dynasty appear for a short period of government rule, but it could not be spared from the rampant corruption of officials in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
The re-administration of officials was originally a positive measure for politicians who wanted to make a difference to carry out the reform of the administration of officials, but the result was counterproductive and had to be reflected.
(1) Clarify the root cause of corruption
The root of the problem of corruption lies in the abuse of power without any supervision and restraint.
This is also the crux of the anti-corruption campaign in China's feudal society, where the rulers hope to maintain and consolidate their centralized rule through anti-corruption.
But on the other hand, under the centralization of feudal absolutism, power is highly centralized, and there is a lack of supervision mechanism for this high degree of centralization.
It can be seen from this that although the Ming Dynasty's anti-corruption efforts were great, in essence it was tantamount to beating its own right hand with its own left hand.
(2) Break through the personal dependence of the bureaucratic system
The supervision of power mainly depends on the public, and the question is often whether the public dares to supervise the power of superiors, and as long as the personal dependence is not severed, then public supervision is useless.
The failure of the anti-corruption campaign in the Ming Dynasty also involved a strong personal dependence between the superior and subordinate officials, and the higher-level officials had to constantly rely on the "common practice" sent by the lower-level officials in order to live a nourishing life, and the lower-level officials desperately created conditions for the higher-level officials to be corrupt in order to win the favor and promotion of the higher-level officials.
The "common practice" sent out by lower-level officials can only be looted from the people by virtue of their own power, and higher-level officials will naturally turn a blind eye, and if the anti-corruption campaign is carried out against such subordinates, they will also suffer economic losses.
In the long run, officials will protect each other and form parties for personal gain, and the fight against corruption will inevitably be far away.
(3) Reform the political system
The root cause of the failure of the anti-corruption in the Ming Dynasty was precisely the problem of the political system, and the failure of the anti-corruption in the Ming Dynasty was due to the anti-corruption under the centralized system of feudal absolutism, and the failure was inevitable.
The phenomenon of corruption is becoming more and more serious, major and important cases have occurred repeatedly, the level of cases involved is getting higher and higher, and the amount of money involved is getting bigger and bigger, which shows that there are indeed certain flaws in the political system.
As far as corruption is concerned, it is ultimately necessary to eradicate it through the reform of the political system, and solving the shortcomings in the selection of officials is the core task.
It is necessary to completely cut off the personal dependency relationship in the ranks of officials and elect and dismiss officials according to the law, so that the people can dare to supervise officials, and only when there is no personal dependency between officials and the common people, and between superiors and subordinates, can the reform of the political system be said to have achieved certain results.
Taking history as a mirror, we should be clear:
It is necessary to actively explore and seek a balance between the two between the anti-corruption campaign and the building of the rule of law, and the process of the rule of law should not be hindered or affected by the one-sided pursuit of anti-corruption results.
At the same time, we should not neglect the governance of corruption because we are single-mindedly promoting the construction of the rule of law, so as to lose the way to solve the problem in a more optimal way.